No description: my greatness was such as to make my face known wherever I went. A steamboat chartered for my sole use conveyed me from Calais to Dover. On setting foot upon English soil, on the 5th of April 1822[428], I was saluted by the guns of the fort. An officer came on behalf of the commandant to offer me a guard of honour. On alighting at the Shipwright Inn[429], the landlord and waiters received me with hanging arms and bareheaded. The Mayoress invited me to an evening party in the name of the fairest ladies of the town. M. Billing[430], who was attached to my embassy, awaited me. A dinner of huge fishes and enormous pieces of beef restored Monsieur l'Ambassadeur, who had no appetite and was not at all fatigued. The crowd gathered beneath my windows rent the air with hurrahs. The officer returned and, despite my wishes, posted sentries at my door. The next morning, after lavishly distributing the money of the King my master, I set out for London, to the roar of artillery, in a light carriage drawn by four fine horses driven at full trot by two smart postillions. My staff followed in other coaches; couriers wearing my livery accompanied the cavalcade. We passed through Canterbury, attracting the eyes of John Bull and of the occupants of the vehicles we passed. At Blackheath, a common formerly haunted by highwaymen, I found a newly-built village. Soon there loomed before me the immense cap of smoke which covers the city of London. [Sidenote: In London as Ambassador.] Plunging into the gulf of black mist, as though into one of the jaws of Tartarus, and crossing the entire town, whose streets I recognized, I reached the Embassy in Portland Place. The _chargé d'affaires_, M. le Comte Georges de Caraman[431], the secretaries of embassy, M. le Vicomte de Marcellus[432], M. le Baron E. de Cazes, M. de Bourqueney[433], and the _attachés_ of the embassy received me with dignified politeness. All the ushers, doorkeepers, footmen, and flunkeys of the house stood gathered upon the pavement. I was handed the cards of the English ministers and of the foreign ambassadors, who had been informed beforehand of my coming. On the 17th of May in the year of grace 1793, I disembarked at Southampton for London, an obscure and humble traveller from Jersey. No mayoress took note of my passage; the mayor of the town, William Smith, handed me on the 18th a way-bill for London to which was added an extract from the Alien Bill. My description ran in English: "François de Chateaubriand, French officer in the emigrant army, five feet four inches high, thin shape, brown hair and whiskers." I modestly shared the cheapest conveyance with some sailors on leave; I changed horses at the meanest inns; poor, sick, and unknown, I entered a wealthy and famous city in which Mr. Pitt held sway; I took a lodging at six shillings a month under the laths of a garret which a cousin from Brittany had prepared for me at the end of a little street off the Tottenham Court Road.